Boots's fabled wonder face-cream is called Protect and Perfect. It sounds like your standard-issue, ASA-approved half-speak, but these words are actually true. It genuinely does protect, against time. And it does perfect: not literally, of course; it won't take the second-rate ragbag that is your face and make it perfect. But in so far as "perfect" means "improve", then this works. The British Journal of Dermatology has spoken.

The evidence of a recent clinical trial is that a substantial percentage of the people who had been using the cream for six months saw an improvement - one visible to outside observers. This makes it the most effective over-the-counter cream ever.

I just can't help thinking how pathetic this makes us look. When you think how much the face cream industry is worth, to think there would be such a furore over an article in a journal, just because an unguent finally came along that did more or less what it said it was going to do (when, in 2007, an episode of Horizon drew similar conclusions about this cream, it caused a Boots stampede). It's like letting off fireworks because your teenager remembered to say happy birthday to you. And that's before you even factor in how pitifully small was this study - 60 people in total, only 30 of whom used the cream rather than the placebo, only 43% of whom registered a difference. Let's just call it what it is ... 13 people. Who'd have thought it took no more than a cocktail-party-sized sample to get you into the British Journal of Dermatology?

Look, I won't pretend I shan't be buying some of the Boots No 7 Ludicrous Face Cream. I just don't think we should be getting too excited about it.